What is it about college math that makes it so different from
your other courses? For many students the problem is just that they
don’t know they’re getting into. But there’s good news:
You already have the skills you need to succeed in math,
knowing what you know about your other courses.

Math is like sports.

When you’re learning to play a sport, is it enough to read
books about the sport, memorize some facts, and maybe watch movies
about it? Of course not! With sports you learn by doing. It’s
the same in math: you can’t just read the book, you have to do the
practice problems (homework).

Math is like sports in another way. If you want to be good at
basketball, do you practice only right before a game? No, you
practice every day or almost every day. It’s the same with math:
you have to keep your “mental muscles” limber by working with it every
day.

Math is like foreign languages.

When you study a foreign language, you know there will be a lot of
words you don’t know. The same is true in math, except that many of
the words look like English words. But math terms like set, prove,
hypothesis, term, solution have special meanings that are different
from ordinary English. Approach math like a foreign language and make
sure you understand every term. It might be helpful to build
up a vocabulary list in your notebook.

Math is like science or engineering.

You need to be very meticulous and work everything out logically.
There may be different ways to get to the right answer, but there’s
only one right answer.

Math is like building construction.

When you’re building a house, you would never think of trying to
put up the second floor before the first floor. Building is a
sequential process.

The same is true in math: each concept builds on the ones that came
before. In history, you can understand the Depression pretty well even if you
didn’t study World War I. But in math it’s different: you need to
understand factoring very well or you won’t be able to solve
equations.

This means that if you’re strapped for time, the one course
that’s most dangerous to let slide is your math course. With other
courses, if you don’t understand day 11 you can probably follow the
lecture on day 12. With math, you have to understand day 11 or you’ll
likely be lost in day 12.

The moral is that you need to stay current. If ever you
don’t understand something, get help on it right away. Otherwise
you’ve just knocked away the first floor of your house, and you know
what that will do when you try to put up the second floor.

Math is useless and yucky.

Okay, granted that lots of students hate math. It’s not your fault:
lots of students were not taught math well in grade school.
The good news is that you can do well even if you don’t like it.
In life there are all sorts of things
we’d rather not do, but we do them anyway.

Go ahead and hate math if you want to, but do the work anyway.
Incredible as it seems, if you accept the challenge and
keep up with the work from the first day, you might actually find that
you like it! At least you’ll have the sense of satisfaction you get
from a job well done.

Math courses move too fast.

At least part of this is not about math but about college. In high
school, an intermediate algebra course takes a full year, probably
five days a week. That’s about 180 class hours. In college, the same
course takes one semester three times a week: 42 class hours. The
material moves faster just because you’re at the college level.

The best strategy for college math? Don’t fall behind. If you’re
jogging or bicycling in a group, it’s a lot easier to stay with the
group than to stop along the way and then try to catch up later.